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Well, thank you everybody for coming.

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Brewster suggested we just kind
of go down the row and everybody

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introduced themselves.

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You take a couple minutes and just
say who you are and how you're

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related to the film.

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I'll just briefly say that I started this film,
I first became aware of Anonymous

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when they did the raids on Scientology.

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When I first moved to LA,
I sort of lived right by this huge

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Scientology building.

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During those raids, those raids were
particularly intense in Los Angeles.

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So I became kind of interested in
what was going on with this group.

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Here was a church created by a science
fiction author wearing masks created by

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a science fiction author.

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Being protested by people
with these weird masks.

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I started following them, but this film
started around the attacks on PayPal,

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MasterCard, and Visa when those companies

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cut off financial services to WikiLeaks.

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We followed it all the way through
pretty much the end of Occupy.

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I'm an Anon.

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I've been an Anon for about two years.

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I first learned about it
right after the Sony hack.

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I learned about it before that.

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I met some people on the street,
random people wearing Guy Fawkes masks.

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I stopped and I talked to them
and asked them what they were

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doing and they were protesting Scientology.

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Then right as I was learning about it,
the Sony hack happened and the video game

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I was playing was interrupted for months.

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I was like, well, hey, these people,
they knocked down my website.

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Let me go see what they're about.

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That was right around the
time that WolfSec happened.

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All of this stuff kind of
steamrolled into OpBart.

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I'm assuming a lot of y'all are from
the Bay Area for eight weeks last

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year, two years ago now.

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We had a protest that we
shut down BART stations

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and that kind of got me involved in activism.

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Now I'm living in Oakland and being
an activist and it's exciting.

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I'm sorry.

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John Hamasaki, you might have seen me
tearing briefly through the screen there.

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A little cameo real quick there with my client,
Keith Downie.

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I first spoke to Brian when he was
making this film and we had talked about

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having Keith give an interview
and talk similar to Mercedes.

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As the date of the actual first court
date of approach, which is where you saw

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outside in San Jose, the anxiety and the
pressure and the stress of the whole

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situation made my client withdraw a bit.

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I think it speaks to a pressure that a
lot of the people that have been facing

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these prosecutions are going through.

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I'm a criminal defense lawyer in the
Bay Area and I've been representing

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activists, civil rights, civil disobedience.

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Probably some of the people you know
probably run into each other throughout the

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Bay Area in Oakland,
Occupy Oakland for the past few years.

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When the indictment started coming down
against the individuals in this, somebody

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who knew me from the community asked me
to come in and represent one of the guys.

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It's been a really exciting process
learning about everything that goes on.

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I think this movie really captures a
lot of the excitement and the joy.

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It's hard to watch that even coming from
outside and not feel good about the

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way Anonymous has been existing and growing.

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I think that we all look forward
to seeing how it evolves

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and where things go from here.

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Hi, my name is Ryan Singel.

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I used to write and edit for Wired
and covered Anonymous quite a bit.

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I think it still strikes me as just kind
of still unbelievable the change that

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they went through from being that sort

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of trolling group that was out for the lols.

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I think I was pretty hard on them early
on and I still remember there was a great

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moment when they were doing some
of the Scientology attacks.

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They were passing around IP addresses to
attack in an IRC channel and somebody

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posted in the wrong IP address and it
turned out to be not a Scientology center.

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It was a Danish middle
school or elementary school.

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They managed to take down this Danish
elementary school's website instead.

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Of course, to troll them back, I wrote
this big story in Wired about how they had

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taken down and hurt these
Danish school children.

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It's just been sort of fascinating to watch.

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There's such a different and growing
animal than where they started.

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I think it's going to be
fascinating to watch where they go.

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I'm Quinn Norton.

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I covered Anonymous and Occupy for
Wired under the iron fist of this man

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for some time.

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I joined in the tradition of
trolling Anonymous back quite a bit.

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That's one thing I've really appreciated
about Wired is that we've been willing

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to get out there in front of trolling
strange internet collectives

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as a publication.

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I went ahead and lived in the camps with
some of the people who did and Occupy

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with some of the people who did on the
ground Anonymous stuff during that time.

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To this day,
hang out in probably more IRC channels

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than are strictly speaking good for me.

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It's been an amazing story arc.

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It's intersected with my life at points.

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It shows no signs of getting
any more normal anytime soon.

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My name is Pete Fine.

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I'm a computer programmer
and internet activist.

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I got involved in around 2010,
around the time of the WikiLeaks crisis.

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I guess helped shift that narrative
in the way you talked about.

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Much more of the moral fag protest
organizer than the website defacer type.

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I retired from anon in October
just because it was enough

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and taking over my life.

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Though I continue to work with that other
group called Telecomics doing similar

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sorts of organizational structure but
much smaller and more constructive work.

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I just want to ask John since you're here,
you represent Keith Downie who is one

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of the PayPal 14.

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I get asked this question
all the time because I

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know this case is constantly changing.

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What's the basic, what's the status of it?

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You're here.

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What is the status of that PayPal 14 case?

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Sure.

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The PayPal 14 case has evolved.

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I think the,
when it first started it was really,

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it felt like the government
was really putting a lot of

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pressure behind these prosecutions.

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I think there was a lot of theories
about the government's displeasure with

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WikiLeaks and this was a target and this
was a way to shut down the opposition.

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As things have progressed we've been
in various forms of litigation,

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battling with the government's
back and forth throughout the

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past year and a half.

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We actually finally are at a place where we,
there may be

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hopes of a resolution in

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the for any of

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the participants in the action that
have been charged in this indictment.

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Hopefully we're looking forward
to trying to resolve things for

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misdemeanors or deferred prosecutions.

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Again that's our hope and there's no
guarantees things are going that way but we

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sat down with the government and the judge
and everybody got, we've had a lot of

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court dates where it's been just the lawyers
because there's a lot of lawyers and

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bringing everybody from across the
country is tough on the people, travel

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arrangements and what not but all the
people that have been charged in this

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indictment, almost all of them were brought
together in a courtroom and I think

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it was useful in that the government got
to see real human beings, a mother was

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there with her two young children,
a college student, a former Marine was there

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taking a break from college,
my client Keith coming up from Florida

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and it just really humanizing
them much like this movie did and

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showing the government and showing the
court that these are just young people and

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at the worst as my colleague Stanley
Cohen said in the film they were just,

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thought they were doing a digital sit in,
thought they were standing up or

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something, they weren't trying to hurt
anybody and we're hopeful now that we may

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be able to walk out of there, everybody
walk out of there without having to go

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back into custody.

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I've been curious about that case since
you heard me I'll just ask you one more.

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It seems like one of the difficulties was,
so here's a group that attacked PayPal

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that basically said look we don't like you,
we don't like what you've done,

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you've cut off financial services to
WikiLeaks and one of the difficulties of the

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case has been PayPal, how do they determine
the damages that these 14 have caused

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them? It's kind of a key element of the case.
What can you talk about on that?

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How did they arrive at what the
damages were for this protest

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and how was that played into the case?

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Sure and one of the many problems that I
think people are coming to see with the

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Computer Fraud and Abuse Act which thankfully
is getting some light put on it now

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under unfortunate
circumstances is that not only

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under this act are you responsible
for any actual damage, loss of

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employee time and what not that
any particular act may cause but

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the company can then do whatever security
upgrades they feel are necessary

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to prevent anything like this in the future.

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So if you had a picket fence around your
house and somebody broke in all of a

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sudden you can get a Sherman tank and
an Apache helicopter and that's just

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what PayPal did.
They're claiming at this point $5.6

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million in damages, I believe $4.
5 of which are for upgrades to their

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systems which were apparently
not up to par to begin with.

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Does that cover the scope of it?

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You want to go to questions? What do you think?
Do you have audience questions?

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I'm a natural questioner
so I can't as a filmmaker.

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I found this film really effective to me.
I'm Brewster K. Ollie. I work here at

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the Internet Archive. In shining a light
on sort of where Anonymous came from,

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that it came from 4chan, I just found
hilarious. I had no idea. I guess it was

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sort of a framing of is this sort of pranks?
Is it kind of a sit in

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or is this taking down world trade centers?
This proportional

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response issue seems to be one that really
is highlighted in this movie I think

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in a very important way. Running a large
website like the Internet Archive, if we

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were to put something up and it got slash
dotted back in the old days, we would

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be brought down just because there would
be so many people trying to read things

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on the Archive and our response is not
to call in feds. It would be to beef up

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our wimpy servers. We produce tools so
people can download things effectively.

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Even dealing with occasional denial of
service attacks is to try to figure out

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what's going on, what's going wrong,
how do we deal with it and sometimes it's

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innocuous. I found this very interesting
perspective, but the introduction of the

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federal government in this just seems to
be often outside of at least we folks in

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the traditional Internet world.
Are we going to see more of this fed

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application in this area? Wow, yes. Yes.

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Consider the math. I'm going to ask
for a moment that they ran a six month

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operation that the FBI essentially called
anti-sec and at the end of that they

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got additional charges on three members
of the whole sec which was not the anti

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-sec activity and one arrest which is
Jeremy Hammond. There's a lot to link the

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recent Matthew Keyes indictment to Sabu,
but one

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indictment does not justify a six month
invention of a hacking group by the FBI.

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They're going to have to come up with a
lot more. I think we're probably going to

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be seeing stuff coming out of that period
for some time and there's a tremendous

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amount of aggression on the part of federal
prosecutors in the realm of CFAA. I

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don't see any sign. The Matthew Keyes
indictment came out right after the

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controversy exploded and I don't see any
sign that they're going to back down off

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of the aggressive interpretation of CFAA.
I think that's absolutely true.

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We just saw Weave get a hacker,

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a troll, like a 41 month for
embarrassing AT&T for supposedly

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committing identity theft by
getting a lot of email addresses.

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The feds are, I think, [...]
of people are using the CFAA to criminalize and

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overly prosecute lots of things
and I don't see the feds

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changing that unless we get a law changed.

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Let me just piggyback real quick on what
Ryan said. I was talking with Brewster

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before about this and there has been some
movement talking about changing of the

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terms of service portion of the
CFAA which was part of what

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Aaron Swartz was being prosecuted under.
There's a lot of opposition to that from

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corporations and big business because
simply put, what used to be civil actions

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where companies would have to sue actors
for violations of contracts, now they

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can just call in the feds and the feds
do all of the litigation, there's huge

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punishments and there's prison time on
top of it so the corporations are, they

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love the CFAA because they don't have to
spend the money anymore and people that

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cross them now can go to prison.
So I agree with everybody. I don't think it's

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going to change unless there's a real
groundswell because on the other side

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of the people are the
corporations and they love it.

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Definitely one thing, they also profit
after they put us in prison so there's not

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a whole lot of incentive for the governments
and these corporations to repeal

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these laws and to reform the laws.
Everything is in their favor to come and

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punish people online.
I know way more people in jail are

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facing trial than I want to. Some of them,
they were arrested two years ago, his

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client, they haven't even been to trial yet.
So yeah, the government comes into

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these people's lives, it ruins their lives.
Some can't hold down jobs even though

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you're told you have to hold down a job.
Some can't hold down a relationship,

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some families disown them. Somebody right
now is sitting in jail waiting for his

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first child to be born, all for prank stuff.
You all saw the Occupy

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movement. Out here, think about things
were rough. People were smashing bank

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windows and nobody who smashed a bank
window deserved to go to prison for 15

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years.
That's essentially what they're doing online.

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Careful.

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The thing to keep in mind with the Cebu
FBI run operation, the FBI is running

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this guy who's actively encouraging and
facilitating people hacking sites for

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upwards of six months while the director
of the FBI is testifying to Congress

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about the cyber threat. The manufacturer,
actively manufacturing this threat at

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the same time that, yeah, which is terrifying.

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This guy, we've, who just got 41 months,
as a programmer, I've written web

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crawlers for two different startups and
got paid to do exactly what he did. He's

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going to jail for a month,
but I did it for a company and for

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profit. That's okay.

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The Department of Defense just went to
Congress a week ago and testified that the

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cyber threat is now a bigger threat to
the country than terrorism. There's a war

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on hackers. There's a war on hackers and
they're using this horrible law to come

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after us. It's really, really scary.

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I just want to mention the
cyber threat is not a bigger

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threat to us than terrorism.

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No.

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No. Not unless, you know,
you mean, I guess, online sex

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chat and you really don't like that.

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Well, unless of course to the federal
government, which is the only, the US and

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Israeli governments are the only actors
that have ever caused, really ever caused

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kinetic damage in the real world with
the stocks net. So everybody else, you

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know, might take down a website,
but, you know, the government

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actually destroyed machines.

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Yeah. Good point. Any questions?
Should we open it up again? Yeah.

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Hi. Two things. One, just kind of a brief
aside and then a question. The brief

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aside is it's interesting how people like
PayPal, even though they're a totally

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private company, are a bottleneck that
affects the entire economy and the

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society. And they kind of have it both ways.
They say, oh, I would just totally

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privately do anything we want,
but then we can also use our power to shut down

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Wikipedia or whatever, which is clearly
not just a neutral system. Anyway, that's

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a comment. The question for you is what
can we do in our movement to keep the

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more aggressive and slightly nuttier ones
from completely, you know, allowing the

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media to portray the most negative aspects
as being the one? Because I've noticed

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that at Occupy and I've noticed that through,
you know, Anonymous.

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You're saying the media, how to get that
message to the media or how do you get

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from the movement, within the movement?
How can we get people within the movement

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who are more aggressive and slightly
crazier to not be allowed to take over so

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much of the public view of what we are?

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Well, I may give this to Pete, but the,
I mean, one of the most, in my time

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watching Anonymous and these groups,
certainly Sabu was one of the craziest,

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nuttiest people I've seen without a doubt.
And that was during the period of time

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after he had been arrested and was working
with the FBI. There's no question.

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I've never seen anybody in Anonymous
that rabble-rousing. But Pete, you're

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interesting to me because you're on this
fence between Telecomics and for a while

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and Anonymous, so you are bridging
this territory between these

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groups. Do you want to say a few words?

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Yeah, so Telecomics is a similarly leaderless
group, no formal members, no money,

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no mailing address.
You just kind of show up on one of these chat

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networks and just go do things.

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And much of what we did that you touched
on in the film was sort of supporting

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people in Egypt and Syria,
staying online and communicating safely. It's

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sort of the flip side of the Anonymous coin,
like if Anonymous takes sites down,

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Telecomics keeps them up. And so this is
a form of hacktivism too, I think. You

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know, the word hacker originally meant
just people who play a clever technical

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trick or using technology in a way its
designer didn't intend. And it has come in

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the media to mean people who just pop
servers and bust websites and stuff like

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that. But you go down to Silicon Valley
and people who write really good code,

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like they're talking about hacking.
And yeah, that worldview, I think,

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has collided in politics that sort of we
can go the same way that we're used to

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reprogramming our machines.
Can we try to do that to the world around

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us? It's been exciting.

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One thing on that, like on the way that
anti-second, Sabu kind of took over the

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narrative of Anonymous, a lot of that is
at the feet of people like me who wrote

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about it because it was just really hard
not to write about it. And actually to

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some degree I think that was a self-healing
flaw because I think kind of at the

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end of that cycle a lot of the media
was a little bit less credulous

287
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than they had been. And the media has
become less credulous about these big

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actors and they've become less believing of,
they've gotten a little less

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suckered in by the DDoS everything stuff.
But I do want to point out actually on

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the telecomics point that telecomics did
hack the crap out of Syria. And those

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hacks were actually pretty good.
And those hacks were CFA violations should any

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of the people in them have been in America.
I have no reason to believe they were

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and those were participants of telecomics
that did that. But no one in America is

294
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going to prosecute somebody for hacking
the crap out of Syria it turns out. So

295
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it's just kind of,
it's in this interesting political story.

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It's in this story arc.
And it's got a very specific

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purpose when they do these prosecutions.

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And I think it's interesting to
ask what those purposes are.

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One of the things I learned, I mean Quinn
took the coverage at Wired much farther

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than I ever did. She wrote a series of
great stories but you can just look for

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Anonymous 101. And one of the things I

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learned from that is that sort of the way
that Anonymous kind of works sometimes

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is they just announce, somebody will just
announce things other than anonymous.

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And for a while the media would just like
glom onto it. So it's like we're going

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to take down Facebook. And it would be
like nobody really in Anonymous wanted to

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do that. They were going to take down,
there was another one where they were

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going to take down a root server.
And I think the date was like March 31st at

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midnight which essentially put you into
April 1st. But then it became like, oh,

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you know, Anonymous is going to take
down the internet which would be, again,

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like would Anonymous actually
ever take down the internet?

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Yeah, it was like burning down their own house,
right? But also to your other

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point, I think it was very interesting
to watch that we saw MasterCard, Visa,

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and PayPal almost simultaneously all cut
off payments, the ability to donate to

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WikiLeaks at the same time, on the same day,
at the same time that Amazon decided

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that WikiLeaks could not host documents
on their giant cloud platform. That kind

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of thing just generally doesn't happen
unless you're getting some phone calls,

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00:25:02,001 --> 00:25:06,001
you know, very high up. And I think beyond
Joe Lieberman, Joe Lieberman was sort

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of the figure there. But, you know,
I think we still haven't heard the story of

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how that happened. But it's very clear that,
you know, giant financial companies

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and the government have very close ties.
And it was sort of interesting to watch

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that actually sort of happen.
You know, you asked how do

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we keep the media from painting all of us,
you know, as the crazy people. That's

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the, to me, the most beautiful thing
about Anonymous is no single person

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represents another person.
Anything that I say or do when I'm online, that

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just falls on me. Those are my words and
my ideas. There's nothing official that

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00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:57,000
comes out from Anonymous. We have ops
that are widely participated in. And then

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00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:02,001
we have some that nobody supports.
And that's what makes an Anonymous op. You

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00:26:02,001 --> 00:26:05,001
mentioned taking down Facebook.
Every three months

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00:26:05,001 --> 00:26:07,000
somebody says they're going
to take down Facebook.

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It's nothing that any of us ever have
any intentions of doing. You know, I've

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never seen it. I've seen people go around
the ideas of why Facebook should be

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eliminated. But nobody's ever tossed around
the ideas on how to actually do that.

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00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:24,001
So, you know, but the media will jump on
that and run with it and say that that's

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an op that Anonymous is behind when just
one single person says that. The media

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00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:35,001
and, you know, certain people obviously
excluded from this. The media doesn't

336
00:26:35,001 --> 00:26:41,001
take, they don't take the opportunity to
actually do research about stuff. You

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00:26:41,001 --> 00:26:45,001
know, if you read any mainstream media
article today, you can take it. If you get

338
00:26:45,001 --> 00:26:49,001
it from Fox, you can probably go to CBS
and find the exact same article. You

339
00:26:49,001 --> 00:26:53,001
know, they changed four words in it.
Maybe, you know, a different name for the

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00:26:53,001 --> 00:26:59,000
person they interviewed. And even that
said the same thing. So, like I said,

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that's the thing that I'm going to do
about Anonymous is we have a system in

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00:27:02,001 --> 00:27:06,001
place that regardless of who you are,
regardless of where you're from, regardless

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00:27:06,001 --> 00:27:13,000
on if you're rich, poor, white, black,
gay, straight, male, woman, that's not

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00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:17,001
what's important. It's just the ideas.
And people will listen to those ideas if

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you present them in a way that people
want that can hear them. So, you know,

346
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:26,000
that's why we're all Anonymous is because not,
you know, you can put a guy, he

347
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:30,000
can put a Guy Fawkes mask on and it
doesn't represent me. And even if I agree

348
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:32,000
with what he says,
it doesn't represent how I feel.

349
00:27:32,001 --> 00:27:38,000
That's a good point. Yeah. I just,
on your point of chaotic versus sort of, I

350
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:43,000
guess, less robust, more, quote unquote,
legitimate kind of actions. I sort of

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00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:47,001
want to plug our website, which is www.
weareallegionthedocumentary.com. We did,

352
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:52,001
in our research, we had a lot of information
left over about early hacktivist

353
00:27:52,001 --> 00:27:57,000
kind of activity. And so what we did was
we beefed that up. It was almost as much

354
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work as the documentary itself, actually.
We created a hacktivist timeline and we

355
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:06,000
went back as far as we could and we just
traced as much of this activity as we

356
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:10,000
possibly could find. And it's really
interesting and I recommend, you know,

357
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:14,001
checking it out. It's, and I think there
is precedent, if you look at it, for

358
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more, I guess you would say, quote unquote,
legit organizations or activity

359
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:25,000
coming out of some of the more robust activity.
I think that's not

360
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just true with online activism.

361
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It's true with other kinds of activism, too.
But so it's an interesting,

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00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:38,001
it's a really interesting thing. You know,
people who may passionately agree with

363
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some of the kind of core messages,
but shy away from the more kind of robust

364
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:46,000
elements. And so I think it's going
to be interesting to see. Maybe tech

365
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:50,001
telecomics fits into that category.
But it's interesting

366
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to see what, if anything, does happen.

367
00:28:54,001 --> 00:28:59,001
Yeah, I mean, part of the reason, like,
you're having all these weird ad hoc

368
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collectives that are being so influential
is just it's almost easier to get

369
00:29:05,001 --> 00:29:08,001
things done, right?
It seems kind of counterintuitive, but we can

370
00:29:08,001 --> 00:29:10,001
actually get more done with less structure.

371
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:16,001
You know, the joke around telecomics is that,
you know, we don't have a bank

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account, not just because we're a bunch
of cypher hippies, which we are, but

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that, you know, like, that means you
have to have an incorporation docs and a

374
00:29:24,001 --> 00:29:27,001
board of directors and you have to have
a bank account and you've got to deal

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with doing transactions and like,
we'd just rather go do some stuff. Like, we'd

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rather just kind of pay it out of our
pocket and just do it out of our own time.

377
00:29:37,001 --> 00:29:42,000
And I think with anonymous in particular
that this was the first space that

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people found that they could actually
be active, that they could actually

379
00:29:46,001 --> 00:29:52,000
participate in the political process
besides voting or maybe sending some money

380
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:57,000
or, you know, maybe, maybe calling a
congressperson. And not that those things

381
00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:00,001
aren't important, but that to be able
to actually directly apply, like, your

382
00:30:00,001 --> 00:30:03,000
hands and your heart and your
skills in service of what

383
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:04,001
you believe is just incredibly compelling.

384
00:30:13,001 --> 00:30:20,001
I'm wondering if there's evidence of
widespread co-intel pro-type program of

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00:30:20,001 --> 00:30:25,000
infiltration by the government.
What a few people were mentioned as being, you

386
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:30,000
know, provocateurs, but whether there's
evidence of kind of a concerted effort.

387
00:30:30,001 --> 00:30:34,001
And also just, I want to hear more about
what's going on with Aaron's law and

388
00:30:34,001 --> 00:30:36,001
changing that law.

389
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:38,000
For Quinn? Yeah.

390
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:40,001
The co-intel.

391
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:49,000
He mentioned Sabu a lot in the movie and
that's really important to look at what

392
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:54,000
happened with Sabu. It wasn't just like
they found somebody and they had him roll

393
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:58,001
over and give them all the information he had.
Then they've continued to use him

394
00:30:58,001 --> 00:31:03,000
for, you know, how long has it been since
he was arrested? He still had, every

395
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:08,000
time he's supposed to go, you know,
to see his trial, six months, they get an

396
00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:11,000
extra six months to keep ratting on people.
And, you know, because of the nature

397
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:16,000
of the internet, you know, you can do,
you know, master IP and nobody will ever

398
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:20,001
know who you are, you know. So Sabu can
continue to, well, while he can't use the

399
00:31:20,001 --> 00:31:24,001
name Sabu and the influence he had then,
but he can still use all the knowledge

400
00:31:24,001 --> 00:31:27,001
that he gained, you know,
of the way the circles work to help infiltrate

401
00:31:27,001 --> 00:31:30,001
them again. Excuse me.

402
00:31:32,001 --> 00:31:38,000
But aside from Sabu, there are a lot of
other people. You know, a lot of us, any

403
00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:42,000
kind of, like, IRC channel we have,
chat rooms or anything like that, everybody

404
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:45,001
just automatically assumes that
there's somebody in their log in ready

405
00:31:45,001 --> 00:31:47,000
to turn the information over to the feds.

406
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:53,001
There's another case where we're
fairly certain that somebody

407
00:31:53,001 --> 00:31:55,000
rolled over on somebody else.

408
00:31:55,001 --> 00:31:59,001
I mean, it's just, there are so many,
there are more examples than I have time to

409
00:31:59,001 --> 00:32:03,001
sit here and talk about that of the
government infiltrating and they did it with

410
00:32:03,001 --> 00:32:08,000
occupied movements and stuff as well as
the government infiltrates big social

411
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:12,001
movements and they try to do whatever
they can to help marginalize the efforts

412
00:32:12,001 --> 00:32:17,001
that these movements are making.
Just real quick, there's some other also some

413
00:32:17,001 --> 00:32:24,001
evidence of kind of massively uncoordinated
infiltration amongst things, EU

414
00:32:24,001 --> 00:32:29,000
document that was dropped by someone on
saying that there was some problems with

415
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:35,000
different law enforcement basically chatting
each other up on IRC servers all the

416
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:39,001
time because the guys who run in going
and just looking to get into some shit

417
00:32:39,001 --> 00:32:43,001
were probably law enforcements.

418
00:32:44,001 --> 00:32:51,000
That's interesting. Real quick, one more
thing to add. The worry of infiltration

419
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:55,001
isn't just from the government.
There are countless private security companies

420
00:32:55,001 --> 00:33:01,001
that, I mean, Aaron Barr as an example,
dude took it upon himself to infiltrate a

421
00:33:01,001 --> 00:33:06,000
criminal organization, you know,
the way he saw it and then was going to turn

422
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:09,001
around and sell this money to the government
and if that's, you know, what you,

423
00:33:09,001 --> 00:33:13,001
if that's your cup of tea, if that's what
you think you can do, then there's so

424
00:33:13,001 --> 00:33:18,000
much opportunity to rat on people to
turn a profit from the government. The

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00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:22,000
government will probably just hand you
whatever you ask for. So that, to me, I

426
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,000
would almost be willing to bet that that's
just as much of an issue as it would

427
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:29,000
be with government infiltration because
these people, they don't have to play by

428
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:32,001
the same rules the government does.
You know, the government has, you know, you

429
00:33:32,001 --> 00:33:35,001
have a bill of rights that protects
us and stuff like that. Well, private

430
00:33:35,001 --> 00:33:38,000
security contractor doesn't, you know, so.

431
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:45,000
What I wonder, and I'm sure John can't,
you probably can't answer this, or maybe

432
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:49,000
it doesn't play into the cases you're doing,
but how, I mean, you just wonder how

433
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:55,000
much of the discovery and stuff comes from
this or if you can identify that from

434
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:59,001
these kinds of, from someone like Sabu or
whatever. Is that, has that played into

435
00:33:59,001 --> 00:34:03,001
any cases that you've done? Is there,
can you talk about that? I'm assuming

436
00:34:03,001 --> 00:34:07,001
that's not PayPal 14, the timing's wrong,
but do you understand what my question,

437
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:15,000
the answer's going to be? Not really.
Yeah, I mean, there was none

438
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:21,000
of that in the PayPal 14, you know,
you don't find out about that until the cases

439
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:27,001
end up getting filed like they did with Sabu.
But, you know, I think as expressed

440
00:34:27,001 --> 00:34:34,000
here at the stage, it's, everybody's aware
that it's going on, everybody should

441
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:39,001
be aware that it's going on.
There's a law, you know, there's an, there's an

442
00:34:39,001 --> 00:34:44,001
interest in prosecuting these cases by
the government. You can see in the way

443
00:34:44,001 --> 00:34:49,000
that they've been prosecuted, they have
expended massive resources prosecuting

444
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:55,001
these case, cases, millions and
millions and millions of your money to

445
00:34:55,001 --> 00:35:02,000
prosecute DDoS attacks and
other really trivial actions.

446
00:35:02,001 --> 00:35:08,001
But that often have political overtones
or significance. So short answer is the,

447
00:35:08,001 --> 00:35:11,001
you know, the ones that we know about
are the ones that are out in public.

448
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:15,000
Any questions? Yeah.

449
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:21,001
I'm very curious about the evolution of
Anonymous as a movement from its origins

450
00:35:21,001 --> 00:35:27,000
in the deeply misogynistic B-boards where
tits are get the fuck out is every bit

451
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:33,001
as common as it's over 9000 to its current
iteration defending the victims of

452
00:35:33,001 --> 00:35:37,001
rape and attacking the people who perpetuate
rape culture in Steubenville. How

453
00:35:37,001 --> 00:35:42,001
did this happen and is it a real thing or
are what we're seeing now just isolated

454
00:35:42,001 --> 00:35:49,000
ops? Go ahead. It's a really

455
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:56,000
interesting question. I'll give that one
to the girl to begin with. So I said

456
00:35:56,000 --> 00:36:01,000
to some controversial response that
in 20 years of working in technology

457
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:05,001
Anonymous was the least misogynistic
environment I've worked in. I do want to

458
00:36:05,001 --> 00:36:10,001
clarify that I wasn't merely praising
Anonymous. I was punking the rest of you.

459
00:36:11,001 --> 00:36:18,000
But the interesting thing about the
way language is played within 4chan

460
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:23,001
and it's something that is very interesting
to me because playing with language

461
00:36:23,001 --> 00:36:30,000
is my full-time job. But also really hard
to kind of get a read on and probably

462
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:36,001
more work than it's worth for most people
is that the creation of space in 4chan

463
00:36:36,001 --> 00:36:43,001
is around being constantly a space of offense.
And in a way it kind of defangs

464
00:36:43,001 --> 00:36:50,000
racist, misogynistic, so on and so forth
speech. When you have to say I'm a gay

465
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:56,000
fag to let everyone know that you're
actually homosexual, that word has been

466
00:36:56,000 --> 00:37:02,001
drained of its original meaning.
Now ways in which it does or doesn't perpetuate

467
00:37:02,001 --> 00:37:09,000
cultures outside of 4chan is a separate matter.
The fact is 4chan has had a

468
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:14,000
tradition of both going after and
victimizing people at random and supporting

469
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:19,001
victims at random, even going back to the
days of the truly offensive speech. The

470
00:37:19,001 --> 00:37:25,001
truly offensive speech I've discovered in
my years of watching Anonymous serves a

471
00:37:25,001 --> 00:37:29,001
really, really interesting purpose that
has never been quite as well accomplished

472
00:37:29,001 --> 00:37:33,000
with any other techniques, which is that
it allows people of disparate cultures

473
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:38,001
to work together in a way that all the
sensitivity training in the world doesn't

474
00:37:38,001 --> 00:37:43,000
in that if everything is already a boiling
point, nobody can actually offend you.

475
00:37:44,001 --> 00:37:51,000
So in a weird way, one of the things
that made Anonymous welcoming to women

476
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:57,001
was that when everything, when all the
misogynistic speech is constant, none of

477
00:37:57,001 --> 00:38:02,001
it is real. So a lot of women could kind
of get in, like I have joked with so

478
00:38:02,001 --> 00:38:06,001
many female anons that there's no girls
on the internet. It's just like it's

479
00:38:06,001 --> 00:38:11,000
actually practically a connotation of
gender when I'm talking to people in

480
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:14,001
Anonymous that I'll say something about
there's no girls on the internet and all

481
00:38:14,001 --> 00:38:17,001
the females will immediately chime in
that there's no girls on the internet.

482
00:38:21,001 --> 00:38:28,000
So it creates a linguistically
interesting space there.

483
00:38:28,001 --> 00:38:34,001
And I'm not saying that's for everyone
because it's not. But it's hard to say

484
00:38:34,001 --> 00:38:41,000
that the offensive speech in 4chan is
straight up normal offensive speech because

485
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:45,000
it's occupying a very different role.
If everyone is always calling each other

486
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:49,000
fag, then fag no longer is an insult.

487
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:56,001
It's just a fatic. I'm not saying that's okay,
but it certainly isn't the same

488
00:38:56,001 --> 00:39:00,001
thing as misogyny as, for instance,
I have experienced it in much of the tech

489
00:39:00,001 --> 00:39:06,001
world. Just as a quick side note,
it also makes it really hard as an editor when

490
00:39:06,001 --> 00:39:10,001
you're trying to let your writers write
this kind of stuff. Because how can you

491
00:39:10,001 --> 00:39:15,001
write about anonymous without sort of
quoting this and talking about how people

492
00:39:15,001 --> 00:39:20,001
speak? Yeah, it was not fun. To

493
00:39:20,001 --> 00:39:26,000
answer the other part of your question
is how does that transition happen? And

494
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:30,001
some of that is just people like me.
Prior to getting involved in the more real

495
00:39:30,001 --> 00:39:35,000
life actions in IRC, I probably spent about
a total of 10 minutes on 4chan and it

496
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:40,000
was eight minutes too many. And so,
yeah, I mean, the turnover is incredibly

497
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:45,001
high. But I think that's what gets lost here.
Even with a given op, but over the

498
00:39:45,001 --> 00:39:52,000
course of a year, and really,
it's just a different set of people. A

499
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:55,000
lot of people have been around for four
or five years working on this stuff.

500
00:39:55,001 --> 00:39:58,000
It's worthwhile to note you refer
to yourself as a moral fag.

501
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:05,000
Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah, I mean, right, exactly.
It's fag just means

502
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:11,001
person. It's bizarre. It's so bizarre.
We're out fighting for free speech and

503
00:40:11,001 --> 00:40:15,000
right and justice and using
this horrible language.

504
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:24,000
But, yeah,
I just enjoy the lols because I think

505
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:27,001
politics is so dark and depressing
sometimes that you need to find your laughs

506
00:40:27,001 --> 00:40:32,001
when you can. But I was always much
more in it for, like, let's make things

507
00:40:32,001 --> 00:40:37,000
better. And that's change. The participation
of people like me has changed the

508
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:44,000
face of the beast. This is a conversation I

509
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:50,000
have probably on a weekly basis online.
I get into a lot of flame wars, a

510
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:56,000
lot of activists who are outside of
Anonymous who don't necessarily understand

511
00:40:56,000 --> 00:41:03,000
the culture, who don't understand that.
A lot of the times we say things just to

512
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:07,001
say them, just to watch your reaction,
just to watch you get offended, just to

513
00:41:07,001 --> 00:41:12,001
point out the absurdity that you're getting
offended at the same time that some

514
00:41:12,001 --> 00:41:15,001
child is being bombed in the other side
of the world. You're getting offended by

515
00:41:15,001 --> 00:41:21,000
a word. And we kind of use that to our
advantage, and it helps us create this

516
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:26,000
shock value a lot of the times. It allows
us to create a spectacle that maybe and

517
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:31,000
this is kind of a, it's a scary type of
reasoning, but maybe if we weren't as

518
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:35,001
blatantly offensive, we wouldn't
necessarily have this spectacle around us

519
00:41:35,001 --> 00:41:40,000
because everybody looks at us as like,
oh, they're the bad guys, but they're

520
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:42,000
defending the rape victim in Steubenville.

521
00:41:42,001 --> 00:41:46,001
Or they're doxing some guy who just,
you know, who posted a video on YouTube

522
00:41:46,001 --> 00:41:53,000
where he killed his bull.
So it's kind of, it helps create

523
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:59,001
a very unique element that no
other movements has ever had.

524
00:42:00,001 --> 00:42:05,001
You point to Anons and you point to Anonymous,
especially the Anons, because not

525
00:42:05,001 --> 00:42:11,001
all Anons frequent 4chan anymore.
There are a lot of Anons who've never been to

526
00:42:11,001 --> 00:42:17,001
4chan, which I don't understand, but anyways.
So

527
00:42:17,001 --> 00:42:24,000
we have this entire culture that we've created.
We have this entire, even if we

528
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:28,000
eliminated words like, you know,
new fag and stuff like that, you would still

529
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:31,001
have a hard time keeping up on your first
day to 4chan just because you're not

530
00:42:31,001 --> 00:42:35,001
going to understand the words. And that's
all we did is we took these real world,

531
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:40,001
these harmful words that people use on
a regular basis to discriminate and to

532
00:42:40,001 --> 00:42:44,001
hurt people's feelings. And we've
repurposed them to mean something else. And

533
00:42:44,001 --> 00:42:47,000
like you said, you know,
the word fag in our world just means person.

534
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:51,000
You know, we have new fags and we have
old fags, you know, and it's just that

535
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:55,000
it's not an offense to be either one.
It's not generally an offense to be either

536
00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:57,001
one, it just means you are, you know.

537
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:04,000
There's an internet question that's a
pretty good one here. I'd like to throw the

538
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:08,001
other panel, which is what actions
besides DDoS could be considered a

539
00:43:08,001 --> 00:43:10,000
legitimate form of internet protest?

540
00:43:12,000 --> 00:43:14,001
Okay, I'll put it out here,
whoever attempts to do it.

541
00:43:17,001 --> 00:43:23,001
I mean, there's a lot of things. Right now,
Twitter storms work really well. They

542
00:43:23,001 --> 00:43:26,001
tend to work more outside of the United
States than they do here because in the

543
00:43:26,001 --> 00:43:33,000
United States, they're, they, Twitter storm,
just basically getting a bunch of

544
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:37,000
people online together to tweet about the
same thing using the same hashtag. You

545
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:41,000
know, using the same topics on Twitter.
So that way, when they, when Twitter

546
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:44,001
keeps track of what the most popular
thing is being talked about, people will

547
00:43:44,001 --> 00:43:48,000
look down and see what your cause is.
And then that, you know, they can go search

548
00:43:48,001 --> 00:43:52,001
for your hashtag, find the news articles
you're posting, stuff like that. I mean,

549
00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:56,001
there are different many ways. I know me,
me and some friends one time, we went

550
00:43:56,001 --> 00:44:03,000
into old Yahoo games, the websites that
they have in the chat rooms, and we just

551
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,001
spent hours just sitting in the chat rooms
talking to people. Like, hey, let's go

552
00:44:06,001 --> 00:44:10,000
play a game of pool. And while we're playing
a game of pool, let me tell you, you

553
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:13,000
know, this story real quick. And this is
what's happening. So I mean, there are a

554
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:18,000
lot of different ways. DDoS, though,
I think it needs to, it needs to be

555
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:24,001
protected. Going forward, there needs to
be a better, a better governing of the

556
00:44:24,001 --> 00:44:28,000
way protests happen online. You know,
if I take the people in this room right now

557
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:32,000
and we go stand outside of a Bank of America,
the Bank of America will close its

558
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:36,001
doors. Nobody will be able to go in.
Nobody will be able to do any business. And

559
00:44:36,001 --> 00:44:40,000
when we leave, the doors open back up.
Well, that's the same thing with the DDoS.

560
00:44:40,001 --> 00:44:45,001
And I can shut down a bank in real life
with less people than it, than it could

561
00:44:45,001 --> 00:44:50,000
take to shut down a website. So why is one
worth 15 years in prison and the other

562
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:57,000
is protected, you know,
by the Bill of Rights? I

563
00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:03,000
think that distinction between online and
off is not as important as it used to

564
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:07,000
be. Like, when you have people going out
and protesting in the tens or hundreds

565
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:12,001
of thousands with signs with hashtags on them,
that's an internet action. But

566
00:45:12,001 --> 00:45:17,000
it's out in the streets. And that's
what's new and different here. That these

567
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:23,001
things are, yeah, kind of coming out of
this sort of space that we've managed to

568
00:45:23,001 --> 00:45:26,000
create for ourselves online because we've
run out of space to do it in the real

569
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:32,000
world. It's worthwhile to, Pete here
worked a bit on the anti-actor protests in

570
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:38,001
Europe and that was online activism organized
kind of emergently on Facebook that

571
00:45:38,001 --> 00:45:45,001
turned out to have over 100,000 people
in 200 cities. 300,000. 300,000

572
00:45:45,001 --> 00:45:50,001
people in 200 cities across Europe
bringing down some bad legislation.

573
00:45:51,001 --> 00:45:58,001
Yeah, that reminds me. Digital activism.
The SOPA protests, January

574
00:45:58,001 --> 00:46:04,001
18th, I want to say it was January 18th
of last year, Wikipedia, they put a

575
00:46:04,001 --> 00:46:09,001
centered bar over there, over their logo,
and you could only search information

576
00:46:09,001 --> 00:46:14,000
on SOPA and, you know, a few other
websites had done this as well. And that,

577
00:46:14,001 --> 00:46:19,000
yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, and it was,
there was a lot of people who took part

578
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:23,001
in this and it eventually helped defeat the,
you know, defeat the SOPA, which was

579
00:46:23,001 --> 00:46:27,001
the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was
essentially, you know, an online censorship

580
00:46:27,001 --> 00:46:32,000
bill. And, you know, boycotts can work
online as well. You know, if we have a

581
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:36,000
problem with Amazon, everybody can try to,
you know, and I just use Amazon as an

582
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:39,000
example, but everybody can boycott Amazon
online as well and that will affect

583
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:44,000
them. You know, so I, like he said,
the blur between digital activism and in real

584
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:49,000
life activism, it's kind of, it,
you can't really tell the two apart anymore.

585
00:46:49,001 --> 00:46:52,001
They're so intertwined, you know,
without one, you can't have the other pretty

586
00:46:52,001 --> 00:46:54,001
much these days. Yeah.

587
00:46:55,000 --> 00:47:01,000
Anybody else? Yeah. I just wanted to
follow up on the Cointel Pro and the

588
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:07,000
Insurgency question. 50 years ago that
those issues sort of deflated the civil

589
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:11,001
rights movement. So I'm wondering what
you guys think is unique about this

590
00:47:11,001 --> 00:47:15,001
movement that would allow it to withstand
that or how it would evolve in response

591
00:47:15,001 --> 00:47:19,001
to that. Anybody on that?

592
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:30,000
I mean, the way we can, the way we won't
be able to be, to be stopped as much

593
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:33,001
as say, you know, the civil rights movement,
even mind you, the civil rights

594
00:47:33,001 --> 00:47:39,000
movement wasn't defeated by Cointel Pro.
Is that deflated? Okay. I'm sorry. I'm

595
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:43,000
missing, but deflated. Yeah, sure.
I mean, there, even now, there are times when

596
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:46,001
something happens that was probably Cointel
Pro that for months we're still kind

597
00:47:46,001 --> 00:47:50,000
of like, God, I can't believe this person
did this, you know, and it's now I've

598
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:52,000
got to answer a bunch of questions about
this and that, you know, there are

599
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:54,001
reporters who were like, well,
why did you guys do this? Or there's, you know,

600
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:57,001
just regular people who, you know,
who will talk to me and be like, well, why did

601
00:47:57,001 --> 00:48:01,000
you guys do this? And it's like, well,
we didn't necessarily do that, you know?

602
00:48:01,001 --> 00:48:05,000
And I just think because there's so many
of us and because it's such a diverse

603
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:10,001
movement and it really, you know,
when one is arrested, you know, 30 other people

604
00:48:10,001 --> 00:48:15,000
show up. So it's like, they can arrest us
all they want to. And it's just really

605
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:18,001
can't stop us at this point.
Information wants to be free and we're just

606
00:48:18,001 --> 00:48:20,000
help facilitating that, you know?

607
00:48:20,001 --> 00:48:26,001
I think the decentralized aspect of
Anonymous changes the dynamic a little bit.

608
00:48:27,001 --> 00:48:33,001
I've also talked to people at the National
Lawyers Guild recently about about the

609
00:48:33,001 --> 00:48:38,001
use of informants over time and
specifically how Sabu fits into previous

610
00:48:38,001 --> 00:48:41,000
examples of informants that we've seen.

611
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:48,000
And he fits in to the picture pretty
well in a lot of ways and diverges in

612
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:52,001
interesting ways. He's often people,
they look for people that are rabble

613
00:48:52,001 --> 00:48:57,000
rousers, right? That are that that have
something to lose in their personal life

614
00:48:57,000 --> 00:49:02,001
that are that they in which they can let
bring some leverage against them that

615
00:49:02,001 --> 00:49:06,001
they're able to turn and have control
over this person. What's different about

616
00:49:06,001 --> 00:49:13,000
internet communities is that is the is that,
you know, you're it's a different

617
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:18,001
dynamic when you meet somebody online in
real life, you have the kind of natural

618
00:49:18,001 --> 00:49:24,001
animal instincts, your your intuition about
this person is is different than than

619
00:49:24,001 --> 00:49:27,000
an online avatar which could be anything.

620
00:49:28,001 --> 00:49:33,000
So that dynamic is interesting.
I don't know that it's worse in Anonymous. In

621
00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:37,000
other words, you would be more likely to
be fooled by somebody who's an online

622
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:41,001
avatar than you would in real life.
I'm not sure that's true because people are

623
00:49:41,001 --> 00:49:45,001
easily fooled by people in real life as well.
But that's where this dynamic

624
00:49:45,001 --> 00:49:49,001
changes. But I think the real difference
compared to earlier social movements is

625
00:49:49,001 --> 00:49:56,000
the decentralized aspect of it.
I'm gonna disagree. I think

626
00:49:56,000 --> 00:50:02,000
I think that the government's done really well,
not just with infiltrating

627
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:08,001
through like Sabu, but through the
prosecutions of Bradley Manning, through its

628
00:50:08,001 --> 00:50:11,001
fairly successful campaign
to marginalize WikiLeaks.

629
00:50:11,001 --> 00:50:18,001
However much I'm sympathetic to Julian Assange.
But and then, you know,

630
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:26,000
the brutalization we saw of Occupy.
I think the government has found that it has

631
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:32,000
some very strong tools to use
against insurgents online.

632
00:50:32,001 --> 00:50:36,001
I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with the
disagreement and say that one of the

633
00:50:36,001 --> 00:50:39,001
costs of how they've put
these things down is that

634
00:50:39,001 --> 00:50:41,000
they've also immortalized them.

635
00:50:42,001 --> 00:50:47,001
And there's a kind of, you know, I've often
said trying to kill Anonymous is like

636
00:50:47,001 --> 00:50:53,000
trying to kill a slime mold with a hammer.
And that's, I don't actually think

637
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:57,000
that 30 rise up every time one is struck down.
But I think that when you make

638
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:03,001
these things the enemy, you immortalize
them and that idea spreads. And just

639
00:51:03,001 --> 00:51:08,001
not saying any particular side wins.
I think it ultimately just kind of creates

640
00:51:08,001 --> 00:51:14,001
more discord. The

641
00:51:14,001 --> 00:51:19,000
two things I take from this are, you know,
the number that floats around that

642
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:23,001
among the black hat hacker community that
something like one in four people is

643
00:51:23,001 --> 00:51:28,000
working for the feds. And that's been
true for a very long time. So I mean, and

644
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:33,000
that clearly hasn't stopped, hasn't stopped
people from hacking. The other thing

645
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:38,000
is, I mean, these things have natural
ebbs and flows. And, you know, I think

646
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:43,001
Saboo drama definitely was like dropping
a big rock in the middle of our placid

647
00:51:43,001 --> 00:51:48,000
crazy pond. But that,

648
00:51:48,001 --> 00:51:51,000
yeah, like it's, I mean,
there are people still hacking.

649
00:51:51,001 --> 00:51:53,001
Like there's people from
LulzSec and AntiSec are

650
00:51:53,001 --> 00:51:55,000
still out there and they're
still hacking things.

651
00:51:55,000 --> 00:52:01,000
Like it's not even stop that, let alone
the sort of more mainstream, just kind of

652
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:07,000
speech activity social movement. So yeah,
I mean, they can damage us, but I don't

653
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:10,000
think it's going to wipe out
this form of organization,

654
00:52:10,001 --> 00:52:12,000
whether it's an honor or other things.

655
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:22,000
I've actually worked with the National
Lawyers Guild quite a bit and, you know,

656
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:25,001
what drew me into this case and what drew
a lot of the other lawyers into this

657
00:52:25,001 --> 00:52:30,000
case, like Stanley Cohen, who like myself
and some of the other lawyers are doing

658
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:36,001
this case pro bono,
is what's going on online now

659
00:52:36,001 --> 00:52:41,001
for those of us who support a lot of
these actions, have a lot of the same

660
00:52:41,001 --> 00:52:48,000
political beliefs is that there is a lot
of opportunities to change and grow and

661
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:53,000
adapt that the people on stage have talked
about. So while the, you know, the big

662
00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:58,001
DDoS attack hasn't happened in the States
lately, other things have, they've

663
00:52:58,001 --> 00:53:03,001
evolved and law enforcement is
only learning to deal with them.

664
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:09,001
Whereas with Occupy, you know,
everybody remembers how it started and it was

665
00:53:09,001 --> 00:53:15,000
beautiful and magical and, and grandmothers
and children and babies were out on

666
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:22,000
the streets and it was a beautiful thing
and then it was ground into the dirt in

667
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:26,001
a lot of ways because they, the government
knows how to deal with these types of

668
00:53:26,001 --> 00:53:30,001
protests. They've been dealing with
them throughout our recent history.

669
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:39,001
So the real potential in the online,
in the anonymous is for, for things they're

670
00:53:39,001 --> 00:53:45,001
not ready for and evolution of activism.
You know, I think a lot of the future is

671
00:53:45,001 --> 00:53:51,001
the coexistence between the
streets and the online world.

672
00:53:53,001 --> 00:54:00,001
Okay. Anybody else? Yeah.
So all that being said, do you guys think that

673
00:54:00,001 --> 00:54:05,001
like a Martin Luther King figure would
be beneficial to a cause like this or

674
00:54:05,001 --> 00:54:12,001
having it like, I would honestly
just like your guys' opinions on

675
00:54:12,001 --> 00:54:17,001
that, just in comparison, comparing the
two as a social movement, as social

676
00:54:17,001 --> 00:54:21,001
movements. Yeah.
I'm getting a lot of head shaking here.

677
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:32,000
Fuck no. Hell no.
Like, you know, I, yeah, I mean,

678
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:35,000
I, I did not do illegal things.
Like I said, I'm not one of those person who

679
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:41,001
broke into websites or anything like that.
And I could have been public about the

680
00:54:41,001 --> 00:54:47,000
things I was doing and the things I was saying.
And I, I kept my anonymity, not

681
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:50,001
because I was afraid of getting busted by
the feds, but because when I said the,

682
00:54:50,001 --> 00:54:55,000
I've been saying these things for years
and it was just me, nobody listened. And

683
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:59,001
I think we're tired of heroes and I think
we're tired of having individuals to

684
00:54:59,001 --> 00:55:05,000
hold up as sort of our leaders, our models,
like that just, we can all do this

685
00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:08,001
and we all have a role to play.
And it feels amazing to be able to actually

686
00:55:09,001 --> 00:55:12,001
participate in something with that kind
of solidarity. So yeah, no, I don't

687
00:55:12,001 --> 00:55:16,000
think, I don't think we knew that at all.
Anonymous definitely gets heroes.

688
00:55:18,001 --> 00:55:23,000
Anonymous has a bunch of heroes.
It doesn't, I don't think I agree that the

689
00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:30,000
leadership thing is actually, it's too
extra jurisdictional. It's too diverse.

690
00:55:30,001 --> 00:55:36,001
There's just too many damn people on the
planet for civil rights movements to

691
00:55:36,001 --> 00:55:39,000
work the way that they used to.
It just doesn't scale.

692
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:47,000
I think there's actually some interesting
parallels between critical mass and

693
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:54,000
anonymous in that, you know,
critical mass has evolved quite a bit since the

694
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:58,001
original start. And, you know, you can go
and write critical mass these days and

695
00:55:58,001 --> 00:56:04,001
you can see Chris Carlson writing in
critical mass and for those familiar, he was

696
00:56:04,001 --> 00:56:11,000
essentially the intellectual godfather of
critical mass and it's, you know, lack

697
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:17,001
of organization and people will not know
who he is, right? Like 90%, 95% of the

698
00:56:17,001 --> 00:56:24,000
writers in it have no idea who he is.
And, you know, so yes, he's still around

699
00:56:24,000 --> 00:56:30,001
and still kind of a force, but, you know,
critical mass like anonymous has

700
00:56:30,001 --> 00:56:35,000
changed quite a bit and everyone who's in
it is in it for different reasons. Some

701
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:40,000
people think it's a protest, some people
think it's a celebration. So, I don't

702
00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:43,000
know. I think, you know, if you're going
to have a, and I think it's pretty

703
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:46,001
amazing that critical mass has survived
as long as it's been over 20 years.

704
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:51,001
So, you know, there, I think it's a
good model for how do you keep an

705
00:56:51,001 --> 00:56:56,001
organization like that, you know,
going without leaders and I think it does

706
00:56:56,001 --> 00:56:59,001
actually better without leaders without
having that sort of figure that

707
00:56:59,001 --> 00:57:03,000
eventually you're going to be disappointed by,
right? And then, you know, the

708
00:57:03,000 --> 00:57:06,001
nice thing about the assassination of
Martin Luther King is that you've never got

709
00:57:06,001 --> 00:57:10,001
a chance to get disappointed with him,
right? I don't mean that I'm happy that

710
00:57:10,001 --> 00:57:14,000
he's dead, but like, but that is the
thing about a martyr, right? Is you never

711
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:18,000
get that chance when someone's martyred,
like, they get to be this, like, figure.

712
00:57:19,001 --> 00:57:25,001
But I think, you know, that, you know,
it also stunts a movement having that

713
00:57:25,001 --> 00:57:32,001
leader. Yeah, I mean, you know,
as an anon, I, some people will try

714
00:57:32,001 --> 00:57:36,001
to say we have leaders, but nobody's ever
come and told me what to do. Nobody's

715
00:57:36,001 --> 00:57:39,001
ever come and said, you know, hey,
this is what we're going to do

716
00:57:39,001 --> 00:57:41,000
today and if you don't like it, go home.

717
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:46,001
That's not how it works. While there may
be somebody who suggests, hey, let's go

718
00:57:46,001 --> 00:57:50,001
do this, you know, let's go take down
this website or, you know, let's go

719
00:57:50,001 --> 00:57:52,001
organize a protest in this city.

720
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:58,001
Even then, it doesn't become about the
person who did it. It becomes about the

721
00:57:58,001 --> 00:58:03,000
reason why they're doing it.
There are a lot of anons who have thousands of

722
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:06,000
followers on Twitter or on Facebook,
you know, there are people who are well

723
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:11,001
known. But look at the last one who was
the most well known, Sabu, you know, he

724
00:58:11,001 --> 00:58:18,000
rolled over and we're still feeling the
waves from that. So I, and most anons,

725
00:58:18,000 --> 00:58:22,000
they'll be kind of leery to admit that
Sabu was a leader. He was the closest

726
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:26,000
thing that anonymous has had to one.
But I mean, there are other people, Barrett

727
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:32,000
Brown. Barrett Brown, yeah, yeah,

728
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:38,000
you know, but there are a lot of anons
who have kind of been like a role model.

729
00:58:39,000 --> 00:58:42,000
And I think that's fine, but I think
somebody who tries to put themselves in a

730
00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:46,001
position to lead, you know,
what we're trying to do and stuff, I think,

731
00:58:46,001 --> 00:58:48,001
especially after Sabu,
that it's only going to be met

732
00:58:48,001 --> 00:58:50,000
with more backlash than it's worth.

733
00:58:51,001 --> 00:58:54,001
Yeah. More? Yeah.

734
00:58:58,001 --> 00:59:05,000
So I see a general lack of trust in the
authority figures that are out there in

735
00:59:05,000 --> 00:59:10,000
the government and large corporations.
And I'm just wondering, you know, there's

736
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:17,000
a lot of people who have made white
collar crimes and gotten away with

737
00:59:17,000 --> 00:59:23,001
it. And here are these people that have
committed white collar crimes, but are

738
00:59:23,001 --> 00:59:28,001
being treated as criminals. And I'll
just take your feedback. Yes. A perfect

739
00:59:28,001 --> 00:59:33,000
example of that is, you know, all of the
anons that are under indictment for DDoS

740
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:38,000
attacks. At the same time, Hollywood and
the government have, they have hired

741
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:42,001
people to carry out DDoS attacks against
other websites, you know, knocking down

742
00:59:42,001 --> 00:59:46,001
the Pirate Bay or knocking down WikiLeaks or,
you know, knocking down just any

743
00:59:46,001 --> 00:59:50,001
website that they don't agree with.
Yet all my friends are under indictment for

744
00:59:50,001 --> 00:59:54,000
doing it. So, you know, I mean, that's a
perfect example of it's okay for them to

745
00:59:54,000 --> 00:59:58,000
do something and it's okay for their,
you know, their bankster friends and CEO

746
00:59:58,000 --> 01:00:02,001
friends to go and, you know, commit this crime.
But if we do the same thing, then

747
01:00:02,001 --> 01:00:04,000
they're going to throw us
in prison for 15 years.

748
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:18,001
Let's just do this real quick.
I, as a lot of you probably know,

749
01:00:18,001 --> 01:00:25,000
I was subpoenaed in a federal case.
And I also, one of my first

750
01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:32,000
real breakthrough moments of my career
was actually covering part of the Sony

751
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:38,001
BMG rootkit story for Wired in which I
worked with a researcher to uncover that

752
01:00:38,001 --> 01:00:43,000
they had infected close to half a million
computers around the world, creating

753
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:47,000
what is arguably what was definitely to
that point. And even to this point, one

754
01:00:47,000 --> 01:00:53,000
of the largest botnets in the world,
Sony, Sony, and

755
01:00:53,000 --> 01:00:57,000
after creating one of the largest botnets
in the world, there was an agreement

756
01:00:57,000 --> 01:01:04,000
amongst the more than 50 federal
prosecutors that could have brought a

757
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:09,001
criminal investigation to do nothing in that.
And I sat in the office of one of

758
01:01:09,001 --> 01:01:14,001
those prosecutors some years later
who was pursuing 35 years against

759
01:01:14,001 --> 01:01:21,001
my friend and not wanting very,
very much to ask him why

760
01:01:21,001 --> 01:01:28,000
he had chosen to try to destroy my
friend's life, but not Sony for creating

761
01:01:28,001 --> 01:01:32,001
the largest botnet ever.
And I still don't have an answer for that.

762
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:44,000
I just need to know,
is Ceiling Cat actually watching me masturbate?

763
01:01:45,001 --> 01:01:48,000
You know, the roles is kind of an
important part of this whole culture,

764
01:01:48,001 --> 01:01:52,000
especially from the beginning. So I just
want to hear from the panelists. What is

765
01:01:52,000 --> 01:01:54,000
your all-time favorite meme, each of you?

766
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:08,000
I will make this simple because I live in
a hole and I just kind of don't follow

767
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:11,000
popular culture, including popular internet
culture. I love the Walrus with the

768
01:02:11,000 --> 01:02:12,001
bucket. I love that thing.

769
01:02:15,000 --> 01:02:18,000
What is it? How's it go?
Oh, no, it's my bucket.

770
01:02:18,001 --> 01:02:20,000
Yeah, the guy with the Walrus.
I love that thing.

771
01:02:21,001 --> 01:02:30,001
I was going to say monotheism, but actually,
I think it's got some downsides. So

772
01:02:30,001 --> 01:02:38,001
I'm going to

773
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:48,000
have to go with Rick Rolling, a classic.
I'm one of the

774
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:50,000
few people who actually do love that song.

775
01:02:53,001 --> 01:02:58,001
I think I'll leave this one to the experts.
I actually

776
01:02:58,001 --> 01:03:00,001
love a lot of the same things.

777
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:07,001
My wife sleeps in a Where's My Bucket?
the Walrus t-shirt. So even though I'm

778
01:03:07,001 --> 01:03:14,000
not enmeshed in the culture, everybody up here,
I have the... I mean, everybody

779
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:20,001
is, once these memes enter the broader society,
but it's a wonderful

780
01:03:20,001 --> 01:03:22,001
thing that you guys have done for us.

781
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:29,001
This isn't a meme, but one of the things
that consistently is, people think is

782
01:03:29,001 --> 01:03:31,001
one of the funniest things,
is that pool's closed.

783
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:40,001
That's pretty classic. I want to change
my answer. Mine's actually over 9

784
01:03:40,001 --> 01:03:43,000
,000,
because the Twitter bot that says it on Twitter

785
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:45,000
follows me, so that makes it my favorite.

786
01:03:48,001 --> 01:03:53,001
I think this has been tremendous.